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azure drake picture

Since learning that dual specs were coming in patch 3.1, I’ve been very reluctant to respec. I think — oh man, if I can just wait a couple more weeks I’ll be doing this as much as I want, do I really need to spend this 50g on respecs right now?

Actually it’s down to 45g at the moment (note for non-WoW players, the costs of respecs go up by 5g every time you do it until it reaches a max of 50g, then for every month you don’t respec the costs start to go down again.) I know this because I respecced to Fury for Monday’s Malygos raid, which was our fastest 25 man raid in history. It was a quick and easy one-shot.

I have missed my occasional Fury respecs, dammit. There is something about clicking on those talents and then having to manually equip two 2-handed weapons because my wardrobe addon won’t do those for me that says YES! UNLEASH THE BEAST!

TWO 2-HANDERS, IN CASE ANYONE DIDN’T GET THAT!!

I was also amused that I’d been teasing our tankadin about the relative uselessness of block value gear, and he’d made some comment about 5-figure shield slam values. If that ever happens for me, it’ll be in some gimmick fight like Thaddius where everyone’s damage is crazy buffed … and I wouldn’t be using block value gear. Or if someone accidentally blows up a spore on me at Loatheb. But I did see some some 5-figure crits pop up when I was swinging away on Malygos in my Fury gear. RAR!!

When I talk about my experience with Fury I want to TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS WITH EXCLAMATION MARKS!! Fury spec is just that metal. I don’t find it as involving as tanking and I’d get bored fast if I was a full time dps warrior but damn if it isn’t fun. It’s the only spec on any class I have played that makes me giggle. Usually when those 10k+ crits come up.

Big numbers are fun numbers. My next project will be to write an addon to work out how many prime number crits I get as Fury. I’ll call it something like … FURY PRIME! (See, how metal does that sound? That could totally be the title of a Metallica album.)

Great things come from 10 man raids

I’m going to talk more about 10 man raids later this week but one of the great things about them is being able to pick up off-spec gear easily. I do this without really thinking about it, if dps plate drops and no one else wants it, I just hoover it up. And I always stick some sort of enchant/ gems on new gear, even if it is just something cheap. It’s the perfectionist in me, I can’t stand leaving the gear ‘naked’.

So my off-spec gear is really not bad at all. I had about 200 hit, 17 expertise, 4k attack power, 34% crit. It’s just that most of the time the off-spec gear stays in my bags, and I’d never actually put it all together like that before.

And this was all without ever ‘stealing’ gear from a primary dps.

What about the actual cool part of that Malygos fight

OK, OK, I’m just coming to that. Well, apart from the bit where I got 10k cri— oh yeah I said that already.

When the dragon was dead and we checked the loot, there was a collective oooooo on voice chat. Reins of the Azure Drake were waiting enticingly in the loot chest. This is a rare flying mount, and one of the prettiest. You can just about see the head armour in the screenshot below, it is the only armoured drake in the game.

There was much excitement. I didn’t win it, but here’s a picture of the beast in the capable hands of the lucky warlock who did!